


No Stone Beneath To Catch You

by periferal



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: AU, Adventure, Angst, Gay Dwarves, Homophobia, M/M, Potential canon typical violence, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 15:59:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6760543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periferal/pseuds/periferal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You, along with Gorrim, were cast out to the surface for a murder you did not commit. Now, you must make a life for yourself on the surface, stripped of home, name, family, and gods. <br/>---<br/>Or, I realized there was no male Aeducan/Gorrim, fell in love with the dwarf noble origin, and wrote a thing that might have more chapters some day, depending on what my muse says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Stone Beneath To Catch You

Gorrim and Male Dwarf Noble:

It turned out that Bhelin could not muster  _ quite _ enough support to pass the motion to have you condemned to the deeproads, to your relief and his well hidden disappointment. He was the picture of the mourning little brother as your father declared your sentence, though you imagined he was more saddened by the fact that he would not be able to end your life quite as literally as he had your elder brother. But he was probably still quite pleased with himself- he might not have condemned you to death, but you were still going to the surface. You would be without caste, without  _ Clan _ , far from where the Stone’s protection could ever reach you.

Perhaps if that Lord Dace you spoke to ever managed to get his motion to allow the surface-caste to return to Orzammar passed- you halted that line of inquiry even as you considered it. You had expressed your support for it the night before your supposed betrayal- that alone could turn the whole of the assembly against the idea. In any case, no matter the fate of the motion, Bhelin would never allow you or Gorim to return. Even if you could return, even if your name was cleared and Behlin brought to justice, you no longer had any chance of becoming King. You were forever stained by the blood you had not spilt.

“My Lord,” Gorim whispered low enough to escape the hearing of the scouts leading you both to the surface tunnel entrance, “Lord Harrowmont has promised to remember you.”

He had been given more time outside the dungeons to collect his things and speak to folk- you had been stripped of all you had besides some common clothes, a knife, and meager coin- and you believed him, but you knew that Harrowmont's memory would do you little good on the surface.

“Thank you, Gorim. And I will very soon no longer be your Lord,” you said, and he nodded. You would have reached out to touch his shoulder, but as a precaution against a potential escape, they had had your hands tied behind your back, your knife given to Gorim, both of you under threat of immediate death if you tried to untie yourself. “Please,” you said, “call me Oskivin from now on.”

“Yes my... Oskivin,” Gorim said, grinning awkwardly. “It may take some getting used to.”

You nodded. “Yes, but we will be equals on the surface,” you said, considering a moment, “well, perhaps that’s a good part to it?”

Gorim grinned a little wider, and you felt a flutter in your chest, which you immediately discounted as ridiculous. This wasn’t the time, at all. Perhaps if you ever do manage to pull your life together once in the surface you could say something to him, but you honestly have no idea whether or not he would consider you in that kind of way. Or if he does, whether you should reciprocate. It was not exactly something  _ accepted _ by your kind.

Any further conversation was stopped by your arrival at the large, red double doors leading to the final tunnel up to the surface. One of the two scouts guiding and guarding you and Gorrim, a hard looking man with short-cut red hair, matching a beard that was trimmed unusually short, called up to one of the watchmen posted in the walk-ways above the doors. “Open!” he called, and with the loud groan of ancient mechanism, the doors opened slowly inwards.

Both you and Gorrim were pushed through the doors, which clanged shut, much more quickly than they had opened, behind the two of you.

“Oh,” your former second said, looking at the long, dimly lit tunnel. It slanted upwards towards a light you assumed would lead to the outside world, to the surface. A place you had never been, and had never intended to go, barring drastic war. You would not have even left for official business as King- any human that would wish to discuss matters of state must go down to Orzammer, that was known. And now, you were mere hours, or so you had been told, from walking into the light of a sun that could not have been more alien to you had you been born on a different planet entirely.

You gave Gorim a nervous grin. “Could you untie me?” you asked, “I don’t wish to surface looking quite so-”

“Common?” your friend finished for you, and you almost nodded, before wincing.

“No, not- criminal, perhaps?” you said, unsure if you were expressing what you meant exactly.

The humans on the surface would not know that you were cut off from your society, and hopefully the other dwarves in the surface-caste would recognize you as one of their own, even if you had once been of house Aeducan. Gorim seemed to understand this, and he nodded, taking out his knife to cut the ropes around your hands.

Once he had cut through the ropes entirely, you brought your hands in front of you for the first time in hours. Slowly, and with a lot of rubbing of your hands together, you eventually managed to regain sensation in your hands. “Well,” you said, “I suppose we should begin walking.”

Gorim nodded, and you let him lead the way. You grabbed your knife from where they stashed it on you, out of reach of arms or mouth, in your left boot, of all places, and held it before you. It would be utterly useless against darkspawn, even with your training, and especially considering you wore no armor, but it made you feel somewhat better, and less monumentally helpless. You could feel what you considered the comforting presence of the Stone leaving you, and you were no longer sure if the Ancestors could afford you any protection at all. Did anything protect the surface-caste, or were they forced to adopt human gods and myths for protection, once they were among them for good?

As the two of you walked, you eventually came upon the entrance to the surface. You realized, as you looked at it, that it was meant to be a smaller, marginally less secure version of the doors you had gone through to enter the tunnel, but years, or perhaps deliberate attack, had destroyed what had obviously once been large, fortified towers, which were now ruins that had nothing but some rotting planks and air between them. You and Gorrim looked at each other, and, saying nothing, stepped through into the light.

You now stood, utterly alone, in an old, dark forest. “Shall we press on?” Gorrim asked, and you nodded. Nothing good would come of staying here.

\--

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